


There's an Epidemic in Africa (And We'll Drink the Night Away)

by angelgazing



Category: House M.D.
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-24
Updated: 2010-02-24
Packaged: 2017-10-07 12:58:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/65374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelgazing/pseuds/angelgazing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's coming apart at the seems, the odds are probably against them, and they don't <i>care</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There's an Epidemic in Africa (And We'll Drink the Night Away)

It takes three weeks and then it breaks.

House smiles, smugly, to himself and to _them_. Because it's always nice to remind Foreman who's the one with the answers.

There's a broken coffee mug on the floor and Cameron is crying into her palms, choking on her sobs. Chase turns around on his heel and walks out of the conference room at a pace that screams 'I hate every one of you today.' House would like to think that he taught him well, but it's far too much of a snotty private school rich boy thing for that.

Cameron stops crying and sticks her chin up like she's got any idea how to play the defiant one, and follows Chase.

There are too many glass walls here, and Foreman just looks bored.

\---

He leans on his cane, and it's awkward. His steps are uneven, and he's hunched over, and he doesn't look at Cameron because it might encourage her.

"I need," she says, and House sits down heavily.

"You're cleared for the time off," he says, and opens a file on his desk for something to look at. It's raining outside and that's just a little too cliché for him.

"Thank you."

And Cameron, were he to look up at her, would be standing there just as awkwardly as he stands, hunched over, arms wrapped tight around herself, eyes downcast. She wouldn't look at him either, _if_ he were to look at her.

But House is a bastard, and she's just standing around in the door to his office waiting for something, so he says, "Try not to take any of your co-workers with you this time. They might still be useful." And the fun thing is, it's not sticking your foot in your mouth if you know exactly what you're saying. He raises the follow-up chest x-ray of a patient from months ago to the light.

Maybe it's not fair, but maybe it is. She doesn't say either way as she leaves, the door to his office swinging behind her. He goes back to useless x-rays and a file full of negative results.

\---

"You only get away with being you because you're right, you know," Chase says, feet propped on House's desk, eyes half-closed, fingers wrapped possessively around the neck of a bottle of booze he's stolen from the bottom drawer of House's filing cabinet.

"You talk a lot when you're drunk," House answers, and hits Chase's shoe with his cane.

"You're drunk a lot when you talk."

"Oh god," House says, "this day will not end. I must've finally crashed the bike. This must be hell that I'm in."

"I can list your faults or we can talk about how Cameron really ran away because you'll never love her."

"Or I could fire you."

"And have to do interviews? Or worse, check on your patients yourself?"

House pauses, like he's really considering, and nods. "List away."

\---

It's awkward.

Chase is leaning against his desk, leaning down, hands on the arms of House's chair for balance, and he's about to fall over because House is barely resisting the urge to scoot the chair back just so he will.

He's had too much coffee, not enough Vicodin and he's slept about five hours in the past forty-eight. He's got a crick in his neck from holding it at an odd angle, from _waiting_ like that's something that he does.

It's awkward, and Chase is kissing him but just kissing. Just. The only place they touch is their mouths.

"I'm not you and I'm not her," Chase whispers later, his accent thick and his lips against House's chin. His arms are almost trembling from the effort of holding himself up. "We just keep making the same mistakes."

\---

Foreman is getting smug, walking around the halls like he owns them. He smiles at the patients, the nurses, Cuddy.

It's beginning to grow concerning.

Cameron hasn't been in in a week and soon the mail pile will reach the ceiling. It's not for the reasons people think, mostly, and Foreman looking smug is just going to _bother him_.

He shoots space monkeys with his iPod at top volume and listens to Jim Morrison say the same thing over and over and over.

Foreman comes by with a case and House tries to trip him with his cane.

"Twenty-four year old male—"

"You're fired."

"Yeah, right. Presenting with—"

"Do you think because Cameron is gone you'll become my new favorite? Is that what's got you so cocky?"

"I think you're a bastard," Foreman says, and is still smiling like he's just gotten away with something. "Cameron'll be back, you're a doctor, you know the odds as well as I do."

"You realize you're the only one on this floor who hasn't had the opportunity to see her naked, don't you?"

"I don't think the patient has had the chance."

"We don't have a patient," House reminds him, just to be sure. "But if this twenty-four year old male were, hypothetically, without a wife and dying, then I'm sure Cameron would be more than happy to show him just a flash of—"

"You really are a crude man," Chase mutters from the doorway, pen in his teeth, coffee cup in one hand and an x-ray in the other. "And the twenty-four year-old male is staying a hypothetical patient, because I've got a three-year-old with decreased breath sounds on the left side and a clean x-ray and normal or negative on every test run so far."

"Chase wins."

Foreman huffs, shifting his weight and crossing his arms. "You haven't even heard—"

"Yeah, but he's prettier. Didn't you know that's how I decide which case to go with? Makes you miss Cameron, doesn't it?"

"Better luck next time," Chase says, grinning like he's won the game. Like he doesn't know House's reasoning as well as everyone else in the room. Like he's got the vaguest idea what winning feels like.

Foreman doesn't really put up a fight, but that's because he hasn't learned yet that the age of the patient can't make them more or less worthy of saving. "I think _you_ miss Cameron," he says, as he walks out with his head held too high.

He's really got so much to learn.

\---

Chase wears too much color. He's got pink and red and brown, bold stripes that scream for attention. It's all House can notice, when Chase is leaning against the conference room table, hand tucked into his pocket, reading the back of a postcard sent to the hospital because knowing an address is entirely too personal.

He says, sounding impossibly baffled for someone whose _job_ it is to solve puzzles, "Cameron's in Africa." And House would bet that he never even thinks that he's slept with her. That it's all so _impersonal_. House is almost proud.

"Well," House says, because apparently no one else is going to, "that changes the odds."

\---

"I'm fairly certain that this is grounds for dismissal," Wilson says, halfway through his second beer and barely started on his fries. He wipes salt off his fingers on the paper napkin in his lap and shrugs. "If you weren't trying to seduce her with your disinterest."

"Has it ever occurred to you that I'm just disinterested?" House asks, nose scrunching in distaste the way it did when he was five. He's never liked it when people don't know the right answer.

"You don't do disinterested." Wilson smirks, and House isn't a fan of the look on him. "No, you're interested."

House shrugs, taps the tip of his cane on the floor in time with the music playing over the speakers. It's something newer and obnoxious. He should know the name, but he never bothered to learn it. "Only self-servingly, I assure you. As long as she isn't playing out her near-death drama in the hospital, I don't have to listen to it."

"You don't know for sure yet," Wilson says, and shrugs back at House in a way that'd be mocking on anyone else. He's got his back to the rest of the bar, and there's so much he doesn't see it's almost funny. There's a woman at the bar who looks like Wilson's first wife, dressed in hot pink with a skirt short enough to be indecent. There's Chase, not watching, just waiting. There's a guy in the corner playing the piano on the table with his left hand and doing it _badly_. "It still could come back positive."

"Do you know what the chances of that are?"

"Is Chase pretending he made it through seminary school with his chances?"

"Buy him a beer and I'm sure you'll find out."

Wilson snorts, half turns in his seat and then slinks down in it. "We've really got to find a new place," he mutters.

"I take it that's not just a striking resemblance?" House asks, forcing just a little too much innocence into his voice just because. "It's always so much fun when the first Mrs. Wilson decides to show up again."

"Julie is going to kill me."

"Well, obviously I meant fun for _me_."

"You really are self-serving," Wilson says, and doesn't sound nearly as awed as he could if he really tried. "Get me out of here."

"How often were you picked up for prostitution when you were out with her? I realize it's an honest mistake to make, but I'm curious."

"I don't remember her dressing like that when we were married."

"Might've stayed married then. _I_ certainly would have liked her more."

"You're always curious, aren't you? Makes your disinterest in Cameron's AIDS-crisis induced nervous breakdown all the more interesting."

"I, like the universe, am a puzzle."

"I'm leaving," Wilson says, dropping too much money on the table and then fleeing. House smirks and has the waitress send Chase a beer with Wilson's cash before he follows, limping extra heavily and bumping Chase with his shoulder.

He keeps walking and doesn't look back.

\---

Chase wears green, and it washes out everything else. He's too pale for it. Too young for it.

He wears green and House has to spend an extra five minutes making a mental list of all the ways he's going to mock that shirt just so he doesn't forget any.

Chase grins all the way through every one of them with his pen between his teeth, and by the time the list is done House isn't sure which one of them has won.

\---

"You are a bastard," Chase says, and doesn't sound so surprised. He laughs, and it's not even a little disbelieving. He's got his test results sitting in an unopened envelope that's going to be lost in the pile of unanswered mail on House's desk any second now.

And House is, so he doesn't really see the point in arguing.

"I saved a little girl's life today," Chase says, chin in the air and eyebrows raised daringly. "I held her heart in my _hand_. I haven't done that since…"

"Is there a point to this?"

"Yeah. I saved a little girl's life today. That's the point." He kicks the wheel of House's chair absently, sitting on the desk like a last fuck you. "The odds are next to nothing, and I had a beating heart in my palm."

"Tired of making the same mistakes?" House asks, and he's not sure he really wants the answer. Chase is grinning like this is a _good day_, the way House used to.

"I'm not making any more mistakes," Chase says, and House is pretty sure he realizes how stupid that sounds. He's got whiskey in a glass and the blinds are wide open. "No more. Cameron's got it all wrong, running off like that. Death won't touch us here. It wouldn't _dare_."

"The _likelihood_ of—"

"Forget the likelihood," Chase snaps, grinning as he empties his glass. "Forget the odds. That's the _point_. I'm bulletproof."

"You're drunk," House says, and is probably more amused than he's got a right to be.

"And you're a bastard. Take me home."

"Get a taxi."

"That's not what I meant."

House sighs, and gets to his feet slowly. "Wow, you were subtle about that too," he mutters, almost under his breath. He watches Chase shrug as he pulls on his coat, and taps his cane on the floor impatiently. "Are you going to sue me for sexual harassment in the morning?" he asks sternly, because he's got nothing else to say.

Chase just shrugs again as he slides off House's desk. "Guess that's a chance you'll have to take."


End file.
